Nation IN BRIEF / NATIONWIDE

Flu Season Was Not a Record Breaker

As bad as the outbreak looked a couple of months ago, this winter's flu season was no more ferocious than any of the last five years, officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in Atlanta. The flu season peaked during the week ending Dec. 25, with many hospitals across the country deluged with patients and some health professionals saying it was the worst outbreak they had seen in a long time. But with the flu season nearing an end, the CDC reported that 12,651 people--about normal for the last five years--tested positive for the flu since Oct. 3. The actual number of people with the flu was in the tens of millions, but the CDC does not keep an overall total, and instead tracks only cases confirmed by tests.